I don't know how it is everywhere, but I know in my house with my kids, and in my sisters house, the telephone is a microphone to LOUD noise. It can be perfectly quiet, the kids occupied with their own thing, but once you pick up that phone, quiet time is over, forgotten.
It amazes me the number of things kids want that you only hear about when you ae engaged in a telephone conversation. You may be talking to your sister, your friend, your husband, your boss, a doctor, salesman, it could be the President, but those kids DON'T care who, they just know you are on the phone and that means Open Season to loud in the house! Seriously how many times have we all gone ahead and said yes to something they asked for without realizing what we just agreed to, because they got to us while we were on the phone? I am quilty of that. The biggest problem that I have found from that is the things I apparently have said yes to are things I didn't even realize I said yes to ! I have discovered there are times when the yes word was actually being said to who ever was on the other side of my phone conversation but one of the kids had asked me something at the moment I was concentrating on said conversation and that kid being a kid decided the yes word was in response to them, and it usually wasn't, but they knew that!
I have turned into an acrobat while on the phone, as I have walked from room to room trying to get away from the noise so I can carry on the conversation in realitive quietness only to have the noise follow me. I have hidden in closets, squeezed into places humans can't fit into under any other circumstance except to try and carry on an important business call.
Kids will also use those times to say things to you that you can't believe you just heard come out of their mouth! How many times does a child say something that makes you just stop dead in your tracks, while you are on the phone with someone? Usually this happens when it is a business type call. Somehow they assume every phone converstation you have is with s friend or family member, it never crosses their minds that you might be doing the phone interview part of a job! Or maybe you are handling a bill. And usually they know you are not going to respond and bring forth a full blown war of wills, because you are "stuck" on the phone at the moment. They count on the fact the 99% of the time you are much calmer when dealing with it after the phone conversation, because the politeness you demonstrate to the other caller, has that calming affect on you. And depending on the call you may well forget the entire situation, which does happen.
In a recent phone conversation with my sister she was experiencing this type of problem with one of her sons, and granted he is only 6 years old, but I have learned with the number of children I have and the varying ages that they have been and are, age has no limit in the phone war. My teens are often more offensive and louder than they were as toddlers and still take complete advantage of my disadvantage from being invovled in the phone call.
In my sisters case this day, she was trying to keep the 6 year old and his 3 year old brother quietly occupied while the baby napped and she had a few minutes to talk to me. Mr. 6 year old was not wanting to cooperate with her request of picking up, and the more she tried to reason with him, the more determined to be disagreeable he became. He did the typical kid thing and got louder with his dissatisfaction, and the more words she used to try and get him to see her point, the more frustrated he became. Now being the oldest of three boys, his little brothers being 3 and not quite six months, you can picture his frustratiin at having to take a quiet rest time, and you can almost understand what he is thinking, mom wants quiet, so the baby can nap, she wants us to rest which translates into nap, if the baby is woken up that nap goes out the window! Hmmmm..... At the point I am getting to though he amongst his tearful pleas, and his reminding her she in unfair, he announces that she treats him like he is another.........ah ha you thought baby, right! Well that is not what he said, he very defiantlely wanted to know why she treats him like his another adult! There was a moment of silence on both her end of the phone and mine. I totally didn't expect that statement, and somehow I get the impression she didn't either.
That brings me to the title of this blog, how do the kids see it? Always different than the way we do we can be sure of that.
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